City of Angels is one of our oldest, most important efforts, addressing one of the most relevant issues in our society today: the strained relationship between Emergency Services (Police, Fire, EMT) Personnel and the communities they serve.

We create safe spaces for kids to interact with emergency personnel in their own way, allowing them to address their misconceptions in the interest of safety, comfort, and positive communication.

To create healthy communities, we must destroy the barriers that separate us.

+History

Our nation faces difficult times, divided on important issues and fearful of the future. It seems like every day we are hearing of a new injustice between police and the public. The purpose of the City of Angels program is to address the misunderstandings between emergency response personnel and low-income neighborhoods, and end these tragedies.

Now, more than ever, we must ensure that our kids are not afraid to call for help because of misconceptions about “911” from experience, interactions, or stories from friends and family. More importantly, we must give our law enforcement officers the skills and confidence to interact with the communities that they serve. What began as a Kids’ ‘touch-a-firetruck’ event outside a stadium has evolved into something far more meaningful for communities. City of Angels is our flagship event, and has become more important than ever in this trying time in our country.

+What We Do

City of Angels events are designed to expose children to Police, Fire and EMTs in a controlled setting that is sensitive to their cultural presuppositions and feelings. Our mission is to address misconceptions about emergency services personnel by putting them together in a space and allowing natural human interactions to dissolve the toxic misunderstandings that harm our societies. We believe that simple conversation will reveal the human “behind the badge”, and children will begin to see Police as helpful public servants, not adversaries.

Our events often occur in collaboration with other community events like concerts, festivals, or sporting events. We bring our friends from local precincts and firehouses, who bring their uniforms, police dogs, vehicles and stories to the community and "open all the doors".

We then invite children and their families from underserved neighborhoods to come to the event. There, they can hang out in the front (or back, for fun!) of a police cruiser, climb on a fire-truck, lay on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, and play with a siren!

Emergency personnel will be around to answer questions and facilitate learning and understanding. Each event will have a special guest speaker who will speak to attendees about the importance of emergency services, what they do, what their challenges are, and what steps they’re taking to be more accountable to their communities.

The events are usually a half-day long, either in the morning or evening. They are FREE TO THE PUBLIC, funded by our generous donors and supporters who believe in the importance of this our mission. All you have to do is show up!

City of Angels events are casual, intended to emphasize the "person behind the badge", and remind participants that Police and EMT’s are people too.

Our goal is to make kids from low-income neighborhoods more comfortable around Police, Fire and First Responders, and to make Emergency Personnel more comfortable in the communities they serve so selflessly.

These community “icebreakers” are our way of building bridges and correcting misinformation at young, impressionable ages.

We host our City of Angels events periodically. We have finished with our 2016 events and are furiously planning events for 2017 throughout Southern California.

Are you a local agency or event planner who would like to partner with City of Angels? Contact us to find out what impact we can make together.